These Endless Days Are Finally Ending In A Blaze
by The Very Last Valkyrie
Summary: The sickness comes upon them like a wildfire, and oh how it burns. For SaturnineSunshine.


**_If you're a follower of my tea and gossip partner _SaturnineSunshine_, you may have noticed that she recently dedicated THE BEST FIC IN THE HISTORY OF ALL FICS EVER WRITTEN EVER (aka _Back By Popular Demand_) to me. This was because I threatened to withhold pink wafers at tea if she didn't give me more of that sweet Dair versus Chair angst, and also because I was like, 'you know you want to, go on, I'll give you a cookie'. She took the biscuit, and wrote a scorcher using the psychological theory of replacement wherein one subconsciously uses the physical (in most cases, sex) to try and reconcile the mental (love, love, love, every question, every answer etc). Thought she was trying to solve Chair's problems with sex, didja? Think again!  
And my lovely pal's request for my half of the bargain was a fic based around Nirvana's Lithium with some SEXUAL SHENANIGANS. As I love SEXUAL SHENANIGANS, this was a blast, and a big round to the SS (not the Nazi one) for tossing this shiny new donkey right into my lap. I am totally your bitch, and I love you.  
Enjoy._**

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**These Endless Days Are Finally Ending In A Blaze**

Sweat. Writhe. Breathe. Cleanse.

They shatter like glass once an hour, on the hour, every hour, so that the floor is littered with shards that mark their arms and their hands and their skin, streaking it crimson and staining sheets that somehow still remain snow white and icy cold even with two overheated, overused bodies and the weight of the world clamped between them like prisoners between bars. They don't touch; they have, but they don't. Lines are drawn, boundaries that sparkle like the white lines of powder his last drew up on the pool table and inhaled along with the baize.

They're perfect - not vanity, but the truth. The air is so thin this high up in the city that anything could seem beautiful, no matter how twisted or warped or sucked sideways into each other they are: not looking, not touching, moaning and screaming out loud with her pretty hands stretched out fruitlessly before her, fluttering on the paler sheet.

Burning on the ice.

"What can you think of me?"

"I don't. I don't think of you."

"You just don't think."

She slides beneath the covers as if she were a child, disappearing beneath the waves like a drunken swimmer. He follows, desperate to see her in the dark; he's allowed to look in the dark, when she says 'yes' and doesn't mean 'no' or 'why' or 'say it out loud' though time has passed and lust supersedes the desire to make bright happy endings out of glitter and paper and glue. What bright glitter-paper-glue achievements could compare to this, to his fingers stroking over her skin and shaping it, moulding her to purpose and locking her mind away. Her mouth slants over his, the pain unbearable but purer than flame. He's not a believer but the breath of God comes quickly between his lips, giving him life, absolving his sins, entombing him and enshrining him and entwining them together like Cupid and Psyche, lying in sin.

And then it flows, like white water.

You can't blame someone for what they haven't done, so he doesn't blame her for not seeing him – yet. She likes to close her eyes and drift and he likes to see the dark pupil of the dark ring of fire in her eyes dilate, and sometimes her eyes snap open in the middle of the night because she remembers with a racing heart the last time she was truly awake. He's in her head most days, a single candle burning just beyond her field of vision. Other hands pass over her, promise to love her, and it feeds the pulse which drums in her neck as the lips part in acceptance and regret.

They don't say what they feel. He just looks down at her as she sleeps, and wonders whether the hurt would go away if he snapped her neck and let her go down without him.

"I miss you."

"No..."

"I love you."

"Chuck, please..."

They're standing on a street corner and her lips are trembling and the wide, wide eyes of a child look back at him with their wide, wide pupils like chocolate with a hidden centre and make him disgusted with himself.

And tentatively, like a child, she stretches out her hand.

_Fin._


End file.
